Summer’s end

Summer’s new getup broke the bank. Short linen jacket, sleeveless white blouse with lace trim along the button line and the seams, mid-calf sienna leather boots and the centerpiece: a saffron miniskirt taut across saliences both sagittal and coronal. She waffled on a boutique pedestal before a three-pane mirror. Peered over the right shoulder, then the left, then again the right. Stockings. No stockings. Stockings in heels. No stockings in flats. Barefoot and tippy-toed. The ginger-haired clerk clicked back and forth outside the dressing room. Four times she asked Summer if everything was okay.

Summer mumbles on the way, out the door, down the elevator, under the overpass. All in, she says. All in.

New city. New job. Both are as old as American can be. Today is day two, Tuesday of the first week, the third week of September. The apple festival starts tomorrow in Hometown, PA.

The newsstand ticker reads: “President calls for calls for World Peace. 62° F. Rainy. Close.” Summer sweats under layers on her morning walk to the train.